law did not get on very well that day. De Lolme on the
Constitution might have been a medical treatise, for aught I knew to the
contrary; Blackstone a work on geology. After a prolonged struggle to
compel my attention, from which I did not desist until I became suddenly
aware that, for the last half-hour, I had been holding one of the
above-named ornaments to the profession the wrong way upwards, I
relinquished the matter as hopeless, and, pulling my hat over my
brows, sallied forth, and turned my moody steps in the direction of the
cottage. Feeling unwilling in my then humour to encounter any of its
inmates, I walked round to the back of the house, and throwing open the
window of a small room, which was dignified by the name of the study,
and dedicated to my sole use and behoof, I leaped in, and closing
the sash, flung myself into an easy-chair, where, again involuntarily
resuming the same train of thought, I gave myself up a prey to
unavailing regrets. On my way I had encountered Freddy Coleman going
to shoot wild-fowl, and he had accosted me with the following agreeable
remark: "Why, Frank, old boy, you look as black as a crow at a funeral;
I can't think what ails you all to-day. I met Harry Oaklands just now,
seeming as much down ~370~~ in the mouth as if the bank had failed; so I
told him your sister was going to marry Lawless, just to cheer him up a
bit, and show him the world was all alive and merry, when off he marched
without saying a word, looking more grumpy than ever."

"Why did you tell him what was not true?" was my reply.

"Oh! for fun; besides, you know, it _may_ be true, for anything we can
tell," was the unsatisfactory rejoinder.

In order the better to enable the reader to understand what is to
follow, I must make him acquainted with the exact _locale_ of the den
or study to which I have just introduced him. Let him imagine, then, a
small but very pretty little drawing-room, opening into a conservatory
of such minute dimensions, that it was, in point of fact, little more
than a closet with glazed sides and a skylight; this, again, opened
into the study, from which it was divided by a green baize curtain;
consequently, it was very possible for any one to overhear in one room
all that passed in the other, or even to hold a conversation with
a person in the opposite apartment. Seeing, however, was out of the
question, as the end of a high stand of flowers intervened--purposely so
placed, to enable me t